Timothy Egan, whose writing I admire for style, substance, and good sense (let’s say this is a man with his head screwed on tight), sheds some light on the drooling, slack-jawed ignorance or our elected representatives in an opinion column in the NYT: “The Crackpot Caucus“. Using Todd Akins public channeling of “something from the wakosphere” as a starting point, Egan describes a handful of equally stupid (there’s no nice way to put it and we should not be nice about stupid people in power anyway) scientific pronouncements uttered by congressional Republicans wielding real power, often real power in the domain they are demonstrably stupid about. A couple samples:

We’re currently experiencing the worst drought in 60 years, a siege of wildfires, and the hottest temperatures since records were kept. But to Republicans in Congress, it’s all a big hoax. The chairman of a subcommittee that oversees issues related to climate change, Representative John Shimkus of Illinois is — you guessed it — a climate-change denier.

And:

[Rep. Joe L. Barton of Texas] cited the Almighty in questioning energy from wind turbines.
Careful, he warned, “wind is God’s way of balancing heat.” Clean
energy, he said, “would slow the winds down” and thus could make it
hotter. You never know.

It’s wrong (but potentially a matter of survival) to consider the Republicans the party of stupid people because there are smart conservatives with no place to hang their hat but the big Republican Party tent, but really! Is our political system so dominated by influence and appearance that cretins can not only be elected but then appointed by their peers (don’t think about THAT too much) to positions of leadership?